


The Fraldarius Curse

by SOMEINNERPEACE



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Faerghus is rough, Kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:27:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29424555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SOMEINNERPEACE/pseuds/SOMEINNERPEACE
Summary: The war is over and Felix is a happily married duke. He thought that Annette would bring a new light to the Fraldarius manor, but old Faerghus and its politics demand much from him. Suddenly, his life is all about the crest of his child and, less importantly, the future of Fraldarius. He learns that he'd much rather be a good father and husband than a decent politician.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	The Fraldarius Curse

Felix can’t stand children. So much so that he had locked himself in the wine cellar of the Fhirdiad castle when they’d visited Dimitri’s child, claiming that he had caught a fever so he wouldn’t have to see the baby. 

So when his advisors try to make not-so-subtle attempts to bring up the topic of an heir, he shrugs them off. 

He’s talked to Annette about this and they both came up with the same conclusion; they’d discuss it when they were ready. He was quite sure they weren’t ready yet. 

He’s grumpy all day after his meeting. So much so that he nearly sends his wife off of a balcony, books and all. 

He mumbles an apology as he helps her to her feet. Anyone else would get angry, but she’s just frowning when he meets her eyes. 

“What’s wrong?”

He has no idea how to tell her. It’ll just make her mad, he decides, so he just shakes his head and turns to leave. 

He’s stopped when she grabs his hand and repeats herself, this time in the tone she uses when he pesters her to sing. 

“Felix, what’s wrong? What did you talk about?”

It’s intoxicating. He’s never been able to ignore that voice, not back then and certainly not now. He can’t even look at her, so he turns his gaze to the ground and speaks. 

“I… They talked about…” He sighs and pauses before continuing. It’s hard. “They don’t know why we don’t have an heir yet.”

Before he knows it, he’s being dragged through the Fraldarius manor past guards, past staff, past anyone unfortunate enough to witness this side of Annette. 

He thinks she’s going to hurt him or even worse, yell at him, before she kicks open the door to their room and sits him in front of a mirror and she leaves. She’s armed when she comes back, but with a comb and a hairbrush instead of the axe he was expecting. 

She runs a hand through his hair, freeing it of tangles and he’s suddenly twelve again, sitting in front of a mirror as his brother chides him for allowing his hair to grow this long and this messy. 

He didn’t have to worry about stuff like this back then.

Annette’s voice, unwavering as always, brings him back to the present.

She’s much calmer than him, for a topic she should be much more sensitive about. “Do you think we’re ready?”

“I don’t know.” And he doesn’t. 

She smiles softly as she tucks the finished braid into place. It’s beautiful, pulling the hair away from his neck and framing his features perfectly. 

He has no idea how she manages to do it so easily when he’s certain that she’s the jumpiest person in all of Fraldarius. 

“Maybe we are.”

One look into her eyes tells him that they are. 

A year later, Annette is four moons pregnant. She’s moody and fussy, but by Serios’ grace, she sings far more often. 

Felix, is the exact opposite, yelling at anyone and everyone who even looks at him the wrong way. He’s about to lecture a young cook when Annette pulls him over, a stern look in her eyes. 

“Stop that, Felix! You can’t just scream at every little inconvenience that happens to you!”

Felix scoffs, folding his arms over his chest. “That’s hilarious, coming from you.” He instantly knows he’s said the wrong thing, to the wrong person. 

Her eyes narrow and suddenly, she’s looming over him. “What?”

“Sorry.” He murmurs, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m just nervous.”

She deflates a little and pats his hand. “Of course you are.” It's incredible, how she acts like she’s not about to give birth anytime. 

Felix has no idea how someone who spent weeks stressing over the beginner level Mage exam could act so calm and practiced now. 

He’s about to bring it up when someone, one of their healers he recognizes, interrupts them with a cough. 

“Lord Fraldarius, do you have a moment? There’s something we must discuss.”

He wants to say no, he doesn’t have a minute and that he’d like a minute to argue with his wife, when Annette pushes him towards the mage and walks off into the kitchens, calling for more sweets. 

Defeated, he turns to the healer who continues as if there was no interruption. 

“This is regarding the child’s crest m’lord.”

Felix instantly perks up. Regrettably, crests still dictate nobility in the upper reaching branches of Faerghus. It’s natural for him to have worried, especially considering the impact of his own crest in his life. 

If the child was to be born with a crest, there would be no doubt to their ascension. There wouldn’t be any complications, but Felix involuntarily shudders. He’s thinking of Sylvain and Miklan. 

“We can say for certain that they will possess a crest. We are unsure, however, whether it will be that of Fraldarius or Dominic.”

That’s right, both he and Annette have crests. Felix has heard the horrors of having two crests in a single body and he’s pretty sure that having a child with a crest is no different. 

“What does that mean?”

The healer hesitates before answering. This is a first time thing in Fodlan, apparently, but they’ve ensured that everything will run smoothly. Felix even gets Fhirdiad to send Mercedes, partially at the request of Annette and partially because he’ll lose his mind if someone he didn’t know wasn’t there.

“For Lady Fraldarius, it means that we must watch her more closely to ensure that nothing falls out of place. For the child, however, there is no guarantee to their health after the birth.”

“Very well.” Felix leaves the healer with a gracious nod. He doesn’t know what else to say, he’s been over the procedure dozens of times already, even though she was not due for another 5 moons. 

It would be fine right?

It doesn’t.

Annette almost dies. Twice. 

Mercedes has to grab Felix by his collar and throw him out of the infirmary, saying that he’s too anxious to stay. So instead of pacing around inside, he resorts to pacing around outside the door, at the displeasure of the guards posted with him. 

He can hear the shouting and screaming from inside and suddenly he’s remembering his mother. She died after childbirth, apparently because of his major crest. He’s always hated the thing, relentlessly pulsating through the night and stinging whenever he fought. 

If the child had a major crest, then Annette with her minor crest would… No, he’d not think about that. She’d be fine. 

She’d be fine. 

He turns to make what seems to be his thousandth round past the door when it opens. Mercedes steps out, forehead drenched in sweat but a smile on her face. 

“Are they-?”

She knows what he’s about to ask. “They’re fine. Both of them.”

Felix deflates, and with that, lets out a breath he’s been holding in for nearly a year. Somehow, someway, it had all worked out.

“You have a daughter.”

A daughter. Annette had insisted on not knowing until the baby was born so she could “get the best experience” and now, Felix has to agree with her. He’s absolutely delirious as he follows Mercedes into the room. 

His eyes find Annette first, slumped over on a cot and surrounded by healers. He starts towards her when Mercedes walks up to him, a bundle of towels in her arms.

He’s never held a child before, not to mention a baby, so he has to sit on one of the infirmary beds to make sure he doesn’t collapse too. 

When he looks down, a set of eyes as blue as the seas look back at him. Annette’s eyes, he recognizes, and for the first time in forever, Felix Fraldarius’ heart absolutely melts. 

She has his hair, a tiny tuft of raven blue on the crown of her head, and from what he can tell, his demeanor; as she balls her fists up and goes back to sleep with a yawn. 

Felix can’t stop looking at her - she’s brilliant - when something tugs on his sleeve. 

“She’s so pretty,” Annette murmurs into his shoulder. 

Felix nods. “She is.” He’s surprised that he even manages to get anything out.

“We have to give her a name.”

He’s absolutely exhausted and so is she. The last thing he remembers saying before passing out is; “We will.”

And they do, after much compromise. 

Duty never ends for a duke and three years later, Dimitri summons him to Fhirdiad. He says it's for official matters but everyone and their mother knows that Faerghus is the most stable it has been in centuries.

Felix whines to his advisors, whines to his knights, even whines to his daughter who giggles at him in childish confusion before Annette makes him get ready. 

Inevitably, the topic of heirs comes up and he is once again put on the spot. They ask about what crest she has and Felix makes it clear that he couldn’t care less. There’s whispering as he leaves and for once, he wishes that Sylvain was here. He could use someone to talk to. 

They’re not quite sure what crest she has. Annette insists she has the Fraldarius crest, but Felix is not convinced. As a child, his crest would flare erratically and often, ignoring his efforts to control it. He’s almost certain that it isn’t the Fraldarius crest. 

He thinks she might have the Dominic crest, but since she is three years old and Fodlan is at peace, the last thing on their minds is training her in anything, least of all magic. 

Annette hasn’t let them run any tests, for their daughter’s sake as much as their own. Felix wants to at first, but when he remembers spending years being afraid of his own blood, he has no choice but to agree with her decision. 

He’s fine not knowing for now. 

Now, he’s more focused on shutting his king up.

“He’s gotten more temperamental as of recently. We tried to get him to try lances but he’s adamant on using swords.” Dimitri is half-drunk, talking about his son, the prince of Faerghus. 

Felix had to admit that talking to Dimitri while he was drinking was far more entertaining than talking to him sober. He would ramble endlessly about either the weather or politics, never something in between. It was stupidly hilarious. Up until he changed the topic. 

“How is Annette?”

“She’s fine.” Annette had actually written down a list of messages to relay to Dimitri, but Felix had coincidentally forgotten to pack it. Her problem, not his. 

Dimitri leans in, a wicked grin on his face, and Felix instinctively pulls back. It doesn’t bother the king, who continues as if nothing had happened. “And how is the child?”

“She’s fine too.” 

“Why do my advisors keep talking about her?”

Of course, he knows. Felix could lie under the excuse of being drunk or he could tell the truth. He decides to tell him the truth. 

“She doesn’t have the Fraldarius crest, Dimitri.”

It doesn’t have the expected effect on the man. Instead, he’s frowning with a confused look on his face. 

“Oh, does she not? I don’t see how that matters.”

Felix slumps back in his chair, defeated. “Neither do I. But, they’re worried, saying that a house needs a crested head to lead. Their usual nonsense.”

Dimitri doesn’t get it. And honestly, Felix doesn’t either. 

“If she doesn’t have the Fraldarius crest, then she has the Dominic one.”

“You’re certain she has one in the first place?”

Felix sighs. “Yeah, we’re pretty sure.”

There’s a problem somewhere there, but Felix doesn’t know what it is. 

He doesn’t really care either, he’s happy as it is. 

Felix’s birth changed nothing in the Fraldarius family. Glenn was still to be the heir, despite only having a minor crest, and Felix was made sure to be around Dimitri as much as possible. 

Rodrigue had made sure they both got enough political training, however, and Felix remembered the way his brother would laugh at him every time he got a question wrong. He hated it. 

He had never gotten a chance to ask his father what his role was supposed to be. 

Now… things were different. If his daughter had the crest of Dominic, like he assumed, then it would mean that a head of house would possess a different crest than the house they represented.

She could go to Dominic, the thought had run through Felix’s head more than once, but it made no sense politically. She would be receiving Fraldarius education in Fraldarius. She would practice Fraldarius-style combat. She would grow up around Fraldarius knights. He didn’t want her life to be constructed around her crest. 

Having another child was completely out of the question. He wouldn’t put Annette through that stress again, especially now that she was working twice as hard as she had been before. No, he was done with letting this happen. 

He’s bundled up in several blankets when he hears the door to the bedroom open. Annette would always end up coming to bed later than him. He hates that and has tried multiple times to convince her, to no avail. He’d go to sleep alone, but at least he’d wake up to a faceful of orange hair. 

Normally, she’d rouse him awake only for him to fall asleep again halfway through her story about discovering a new book she hadn’t read in their library. But tonight, she just rolls onto her side in silence. 

Something was off. 

And, as always, Felix can absolutely not stand seeing her upset. So he turns over to face her back. 

“Annette?” He’s poking her hard enough that she should yell at him. When she swats his hand away without saying anything, he knows something’s up. “What’s wrong?”

She groans into a pillow, but still refuses to speak. 

Felix gives her time before she responds. “It’s her crest.”

His mind runs through a million possibilities when he hears that word. Annette wouldn’t have gotten her tested, right? Not without him. 

“It’s probably Dominic.” She mumbles. 

Felix frowns. He likes being correct more than anyone and he would love to hit his wife with an “I told you so”, but she looks absolutely defeated here. 

“You got it tested?”

She has tears in her eyes when she turns around to look at him. “No… but you were right when you said the crest of Fraldarius appears with weapon use.”

“You gave her a weapon?

“I gave her a sword-”

“You gave a three-year-old a sword?” Felix isn’t sure if he’s happy or astounded to hear that his wife let their child swing around a weapon before he did. 

“-to check if her crest showed up and nothing happened.” Annette shrinks back into the blankets with a sad look on her face. 

“Annette, I didn’t mean it appears only when using a weapon... It’s likely to, but if it didn’t, that doesn’t really mean anything.”

“I thought… I wanted her to have-”

“You wanted her to have my crest?” 

Annette nods and Felix is unsure what to say to her. “Why?”

She takes a deep breath before speaking again. “I don’t want her to feel terrible over not having one or having the wrong one or getting hurt when she finally finds out she has one or…”

The wrong one? He opens his mouth to cut her off again when she talks right over him.

“I don’t want you to leave because she doesn’t have the right crest or because I did something wrong!” 

She finishes her speech in a huff and he’s left stunned. Something wrong? 

“Annette, you almost died.”

She doesn’t say anything back.

“So I’m not going to let you go through that again. And I”m not going to leave you, why would you think that?”

When she talks, her voice is quiet. “They want a crest of Fraldarius.”

Felix sighs. It was always what they wanted. He had stopped caring about them decades ago. 

“I don’t care.” It comes out harsher than he wants it to and she flinches. He tries again because, by the goddess, he won’t go to bed without letting his wife unwind. “It doesn’t matter to me what crest she has. She’s not going anywhere and neither are we.

“I promise you, it wouldn’t make me love you two any less.”

When she doesn’t respond, he wraps an arm around his waist and pulls her into him. She holds onto him like he did to her after Gronder. 

He kisses the top of her head and decides to end this conversation with a cheap shot - “You’ll have to give her a tome next time.”

Annette lets out a watery chuckle, as weak as she can manage, and he knows he’s - no - they’ve won. 

They fall asleep and nothing’s changed. 

Felix’s blade whistles through the air as he tears up another training dummy. Time has changed many things in his life but his enthusiasm to run through dozens of training swords every day did not. 

He has a bet with Sylvain; that he'll wipe the floor with him the next time the two meet. As of recently, the only messages he’s been getting from the Gautier region are bragging letters about Sylvain’s wife or how many kids he has, or how often they throw masquerade parties up there. 

Felix is happy for the guy, but he liked him better when he was a teenager, which is saying something. 

He lands a clean hit on the torso of the dummy and his sword snaps, sending hay and wood across the Fraldarius training grounds. He’s about to get another one and start all over when he realizes that Sylvain hasn’t trained properly since he was ten years old. Smirking to himself, he instead moves to sweep the scraps up when the grounds’ doors swing open. 

Strange, everyone in the manor knew not to bother him when he had a sword in his hands. He kept sweeping, whoever it was had something to say. 

“Father?” 

Oh.

He’s not sure how to talk to his daughter, even after all these years. She’s taken after her mother, barricading herself in the library and reading endlessly through the nights. 

He’s also not sure why a seven-year-old would waste their time with stuff like that. When he was seven, well he was doing the same thing he was doing now, cleaning up after his own messes. 

Felix cocked an eyebrow. “Mhm?”

She was here to ask him to read another story to her or let her do his hair in various unflattering styles since her own was still too short. Felix had grown so numb to her shenanigans that he once walked into a financial meeting with his hair in two loops like Annette when she was a teenager. 

To this day he still hears that story. 

“Something happened.” 

“Did you break another library shelf?” Felix says, only half-joking. He can’t remember if that was her or Annette.

“No! I was... reading a book mother gave me and I broke it.”

Felix laughs. “And you came to me instead of going to her?”

His daughter might have his hair, but when she pouts it’s all Annette. 

“Don’t tell her!”

“I won’t.” He says, throwing the remaining scraps of his sword into the fireplace before turning to her. “How did you manage to break a book?”

She folds her arms together in what seems to be a clear mockery of himself. “I don’t know! I was just reading!” 

Yeah, everything about her screams Annette.

“I turned a page and something came out of my hand and the book was broken.”

“Magic?” She’s seen magic before, that was the only way they got her to sleep when she was a toddler. He wouldn’t put it past her to have picked some up. 

She fidgets with her dress before answering. “It looked like… looked like one of those things she draws in the air before she makes the wind.”

A sigil. 

Felix’s breath catches in his chest. “What?”

He says it wrong and now there are tears threatening to spill from her eyes. Damnit. He’s always messed up with words, but now he’s really screwed up. He scoops her up into his arms and she buries herself into his shoulder, sobbing.

She’s far stronger than he is; he had locked himself in his room, staring at his hands for days after discovering his crest. 

He’s not sure how to calm her down, so he just rubs her back and whispers consoling words to her as his mind raced to find a solution for this. He has to find Annette. 

They find her in the gardens, humming to herself as she skips past the plants. Under any other circumstance, Felix would laugh and join her. 

“Felix?” Annette notices them as they approach. Her eyes land on their daughter’s tear-stricken face and she drops the watering can she’s holding. “What-”

“We’ll be in her bedroom.” Because Felix knows that Annette will freak out too if he shows any signs of being stressed. “Bring a healer.”

Ten minutes later, she enters the room with a grave look on her face, trailed by a white mage. 

Annette makes her way to the bed in the middle of the room and wraps an arm around the child, who is utterly clueless as to what is happening. 

The healer fiddles briefly with a large, rectangular box-like object. A crest device. The device is something akin to what they had at Garreg Mach, he recalls. They were easy to use and easier to transport than whatever they had used in the past; ice and surgery kits. When Felix had to be tested for a crest, it was a painful procedure, involving blood work. 

He rubs the scar on his arm as the healer positions his daughter’s hand over the device. 

It flares up and the room is engulfed in an orange hue. There’s a decorated sigil floating above the device, shining so bright that it reflects itself in everyone’s eyes. Felix has seen this before, on the battlefield where it flashed through enemy battalions, serving as a beacon in the chaos of war. 

Now, it’s anything but desirable to see. 

The healer nods the confirmation; “It is the crest of Dominic.” Annette slowly nods too. 

“It is.”

“Thank you.” Felix can barely hear his own voice. “You can leave now.”

The healer leaves the family to themselves but the murky atmosphere is still condensed in the room. 

Felix drags his eyes off of the crest device and to his daughter. She’s trembling as she clings on to Annette, who is softly murmuring a song into her ear. 

He’s cursing himself because it’s always been like this; he’s never known what to say. Not when Glenn died. Not at his father’s funeral. And not now. 

“Felix?” Annette’s voice brings him back. “Are you alright?”

He’s not sure he can speak, so he inhales before trying. “I’m fine.” His daughter’s looking at him too, frowning like she’s upset him somehow. 

“I’m fine.” He says it again, this time more to convince himself. 

“Did I do something wrong?” And his heart absolutely shatters. 

“No…” He closes the distance between them to crouch in front of his daughter. It’s not until he grasps both of her hands in his that he realizes how young she is and how tragic her life will be, governed by a crest. “Of course not.”

He’s never seen or heard his daughter this sad.

“It’ll be okay.” He says to her. Annette grabs his other hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. 

He looks up at her and there’s a sad smile on her face. 

It will be okay.

Ingrid comes to the manor the following moon. Her knight duties are very fluid and she’s free to do as she sees fit, so Felix isn’t surprised when she shows up without any prior message. 

His daughter is absolutely ecstatic. She tears apart the entrance hall and repositions everything two times over, shouting about the same Auntie Ingrid that had taken care of her when she was a baby. 

The crest clearly does not bother her. 

When Ingrid arrives, the three of them, including Annette, barricade themselves in the library and declare a “girls night out” even though it’s still midday. 

Felix has nothing better that he wants to do, so he ends up walking past the doors more than he intends to. All he can hear from outside are laughs and the occasional crash of what seems to be lance. How they snuck a lance past him, he’ll never know. 

He has to admit, he’s a bit jealous. They’d taken all the food from the kitchens and had ignored him all day. 

It isn’t until he’s halfway through his paperwork when the doors to his office swing open. 

Ingrid, cloaked in the royal blue instead of the turquoise capette she donned during the war, strides in, without a knock or a care in the world. 

Instead of striking up a conversation, she instead sits on the chair opposite to Felix, pulls a stack of papers from his desk, and starts going through them, making a variety of faces at each individual one. Felix can only stare at her incredulously.

How dare she. 

He has to hand it to her though, ever since she was a child she had been able to orchestrate a discussion. With Sylvain, that had meant talking over him to shut him up. With Felix, it was the opposite. 

When she makes a particularly disgusted face at a sheet, he’s not sure if she’s mad at him or the writing. 

He decides to throw something out. “So…”

“So.” Ingrid’s expression is impassive as ever. She’s inviting him to speak first. 

“What… did you three do?”

A grin spreads across her face. “Not much. Read some stories and ate some food.”

“Ingrid.” He’s unconvinced. “I heard the lance.”

“Can you blame her though? It’s impossible to say no to those eyes.” Ingrid laughs. “I don’t know how you do it.”

Felix buries his face into his hands. Gods. “I don’t. She doesn’t even ask me anything, she just does stuff.”

“Sounds like you then.”

“Oh please.” He scoffs. “She’s more like Annette if anything.”

Ingrid shrugs and takes a bite out of a meat skewer she had materialized from out of nowhere. “She looks just like you when we were reading the knight tales in there.”

When Glenn was reading the knight tales to them, she meant. Felix realizes that Ingrid has moved on gracefully from her losses and her aloof, yet knightly attitude is a testament to that. 

“I don’t want her to read that… stuff. Not now, at least. She’s too young.”

It was Ingrid’s turn to roll her eyes. “You were reading the same books at her age-”

“Different times.”

She continues as if she wasn’t interrupted. “Besides, you haven’t let her use a sword yet, she’s naturally curious.”

“She hasn’t asked me.”

Ingrid lets out a chuckle. “You’re not the easiest person to approach Felix. You look like you’re about to blow someone’s head off with a thunder spell when they try to talk to you.”

What bothers Felix about that statement isn’t how she says it, but that he’s heard someone say the exact same thing before, word for word. He’s trying to imagine what someone looks like right before they throw a thunder spell when Ingrid continues. 

“Has Annette taught her any magic?”

“No.”

If Ingrid hadn’t known about his daughter’s crest before she arrived, she had almost certainly figured it out while they were in the library. 

She hums and turns her attention back to the stack of the papers in her hands. Felix feels uncomfortably obligated to elaborate. 

“I don’t want her to worry about that stuff. I want her to do what she’s actually happy to do.” He adds reluctantly; “Which is apparently reading those books.”

It takes a moment for Ingrid to speak again. But when she does, there’s a hint of admiration that lingers in her voice. 

“You’re a good father, Felix.” 

Even if they hadn’t been practically siblings at one point, Felix could tell the smile on her face was genuine. 

It’s late, too late when Felix decides to retire for the night. His job is way too hard. So hard that he can’t even count how many bars he’s been to in the past couple of days. 

He throws himself on the bed and rolls over onto the pillow. 

He doesn’t have time to change out of his clothes before his eyelids flutter and before he knows it, he’s falling asleep.

Something rouses him back to consciousness, prodding at his cheek. It isn’t gentle nor is it trying to be quiet. Felix throws an eye open to see who could possibly dare to annoy him at this hour. 

His daughter, in all the glory a ten-year-old could muster, stares back at him. He shuts his eye again. 

“Wake up!”

All he can manage is a weak ‘No’ before he rolls over on his other side. 

“You have to wake up!” 

Felix can’t possibly understand why he has to wake up. “I don’t have to.”

“You do!” She shakes his shoulders in a move that is very fitting of her mother. “It’s your birthday!”

Oh Goddess. It was past midnight, so it technically was his birthday. It didn’t matter right now, though. He was still tired. 

“Too tired.” He says, groaning into his pillow. “Lemme sleep.”

Like always, she doesn’t listen and moves to jump off the bed. “I’m going to get mom.”

He grabs her by the wrist before she falls off. “Stay. You’ll never find her this late.” 

She pouts but decides to stay regardless. 

They rest in silence for a while and Felix thinks he’s about to fall back asleep when she speaks again. 

“What presents do you want?”

He frowns. He doesn’t know, actually. At the monastery, Ingrid had given him a sword. Sylvain had found a pair of women’s dancing gloves and gotten Dimitri to co-gift it to him. Funnily, enough Annette had gotten him a sword too. 

What would he like?

“I dunno. Not a sword though.”

“Why not?”

“Have too many.” 

She laughs loudly and Felix decides that he has another favorite sound in this cruel, unforgiving world. 

“You can’t have too much of anything!”

Felix smiles. “You’d be surprised.” 

He’s almost asleep again when he hears the creak of the doors. His daughter shuffles next to him, reaching out to grab whoever it was that entered the room. 

“Shhh, you’ll wake him up!” Annette’s voice is poorly hushed as she climbs into bed next to both of them, he’s certain she’s not even trying to be quiet. 

“M’awake.”

“Felix! Why are you still awake when I told you to go to sleep early today?”

“I tried. I had work.”

“He went out to town.”

Felix stares disbelievingly at the lump of blankets that he assumes is his daughter. Waking up the duke from his sleep was one thing. Reporting what her father did in his leisure was another. He felt absolutely betrayed. 

Annette sighs as she settles in next to her. “Oh well. It’s your birthday, after all.” 

No, they weren’t done with this. Felix can afford to be petty. Like she said, it is his birthday, after all. 

“Why do I get yelled at but she doesn’t? It’s way past her bedtime, Annette.” 

“I’m sleeping now!”

Annette clicks her tongue. “I can’t even get myself to sleep and you two are arguing about whose bedtime is earlier.”

“That’s your own fault mom, you read those stupid books!”

“They are not stupid! You like them!”

“They’re boring now, I like fighting better.”

As their argument grows louder and as he lays there, Felix barely realizes that he’s crying. He ducks his head under the covers and sloppily wipes the tears off of his face. 

It’s a miracle, he thought this manor would only bring back unpleasant memories of happier, distant times. 

But, this… this is happy. This is what he wants. 

He can make this work.

**Author's Note:**

> I suck at thinking of names so my excuse for not giving their daughter a name is that it would take focus away from the story


End file.
